posted at 11:04 am on September 24, 2007 by Allahpundit

Closed to the public, no protest signs allowed, questions to be asked via index card with no back-and-forth between the students and honored guest. A “free exchange of ideas” indeed. In a way I’m glad, though: this puts all the pressure on Bollinger to grill him. If he softballs him — which he probably won’t lest the few remaining scraps of his credibility end up in the toilet — he’ll never hear the end of it.

Some of New York State’s powers that be are threatening Columbia with a cut-off of government aid. Don’t believe it; this will be forgotten by everyone but the right within a week. Meanwhile, Gateway Pundit has photos of Mahdi greeting 1,500 starstruck Iranian fascists last night in the heart of the western world’s greatest city.

Anyone know if this trainwreck is being simulcast anywhere, incidentally? The Freepers thought Voice of America might be carrying it but I don’t see anything on the website. Click the image to watch.

Comments

Andrew Marcus – on video assignment for PJM – reports that the Port Authority evicted protesters from Ground Zero this morning. Group – including family members of 9/11 victims – was in front of the PATH station protesting possible appearance at Ground Zero by Ahmadinejad.

Why am I not surprised that it’s closed to the public? Can you imagine the uproar if someone asked this man an actual critical question??

I was hoping someone would ask him what he’s going to do since the IAF managed to outwit the defense system that both Iran and Syria use and how he thinks he’s going to outsmart the Israelis since they can clearly take numerous advantages of the vulnerabilities in his nation’s security. I would imagine a full out hissy fit by ol’ Mahmoud would ensue. But even if this was a “free exchange of ideas” someone asking him an actual question that requires some intelligence and Ahmadinejad would have to answer with something other than “It’s the Zionists,” Katrina, President Bush, etc., etc.

sometimes… I feel their anger, we did in fact arm their enemy, who killed who knows how many of their people. eventually there has to be a point where we apologize to the people of Iran for giving chemical and biological weapons to their enemy. right? and by them, I don’t mean the Islamic Regime in power I mean the people of Persia. or have we already apologised for that?

The first thing I noticed in the video clip was a nutroot blowing a whistle trying to prevent the people on the sidewalk from expressing there outrage at the universities willingness to allow human garbage to speak there.

sometimes… I feel their anger, we did in fact arm their enemy, who killed who knows how many of their people. eventually there has to be a point where we apologize to the people of Iran for giving chemical and biological weapons to their enemy. right? and by them, I don’t mean the Islamic Regime in power I mean the people of Persia. or have we already apologised for that?

Kaptain Amerika on September 24, 2007 at 11:18 AM

Beh. I don’t feel the need to apologize for something like that. It was something of pitting the one Soviet Russia backed and the one the US backed. Has Soviet Russia ever apologized for their role in that? Or arming Egypt for the Yom Kippur War? Or the gulags?
I’m afraid to say that even if Russia and the US stayed out of the Iran-Iraq war, they’d still would have found ways to massacre each other.

Perhaps, the US should apologize for carpet bombing Dresden or nuking Japan during WW2 as well.

It isn’t surprising to me, but no less sad. They talk about how he will see the great ‘free speech’ of the west, but when he gets here, we turn the format into something he would be comfortable in Iran. This will allow him to say, we do the same thing in Iran – we are just like you.

Again, we need to let Europe host the UN for a few decades please. Kick the UN out of the US.

I will consider an apology only after their apology for taking hostages and keeping them for almost 400 days! As far as I am concerned Iran declared war on the US in November of 1979! Anything we supplied to Iraq to defeat them was fair game.

The Clinton campaign has done as much if not more than
any campaign to protect itself from situations such as
this, and none of the other campaigns, other than
hypocritically, can point a finger at the Clinton
campaign on fund-raising problems,” said Hassan
Nemazee, who is a fund-raising bundler for Mrs.
Clinton, as Mr. Hsu had been.

Hassan Nemazee, an Iranian American financier based in
New York, was on the board of the American Iranian
Council when that organization arranged for President
Clinton’s secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, toapologize for America’s role in the 1953 coup that
brought the Shah to power in Iran.

Closed to the public, no protest signs allowed, questions to be asked via index card with no back-and-forth between the students and honored guest.

Free speech for he but not for thee?

I’ll be spending the day fantasizing there’s an F-22 sitting in a hangar somewhere on the east coast dangling an AMRAAM with a “black” EMP warhead in its main bay, waiting to cause an inexplicable failure of all the electrical systems on an outbound diplomatic flight over the mid-Atlantic. But I’m guessing it’s about as realistic as the one involving me, Heather Naughert, and Julie Banderas…

Moral relavance? What an idiotic way of looking at things. They sponsered a gov. that raped children, then murdered them in front of the parents, raped women, killed women, killed dissidents, destroyed thousands with bio chemicals, let the parents watch as their children were ripped apart by dogs just to gain information. And this during “peace”.

Your post is filthy…that is the mentality that allows these dictators to roam the world with immunity. That is how the Idi Amans, and others that have followed continue their murderous rampage. That is how millions of Cambodians are murdered, tens of thousands of Koreans are imprisoned and killed, Darfur, and many other counties mired in dictators that murder at will. And your answer, isn’t to condemn, but to fell sorry for the poor leaders.
You feel their pain…where have I heard that before?

Too bad you can’t feel the pain of the thousands of families whose fathers were pulled out of bed in the middle of the night and shot in front of the house and ordered to have him left there as a message. Too bad you can’t feel the pain of the parents who have watched their children consumed by rabid dogs, or a husband whose wife was raped by soldiers…too bad you can’t feel that pain. You live here and you get to pick and choose what “pain” you want to feel.

Blackfive brought up a good point. Why does Columbia University refuse to allow ROTC on campus because they “discriminate” against homosexuals while letting the leader of a country that still hangs homosexuals speak? I wonder if any of the progressives at Columbia will get to ask write down on an index card any questions about Iran’s treatment of homosexuals?

Can somebody please explain it to me where in the first amendment dose it says we have to give a platform to our enemies?

Am I missing something???

Mojack420 on September 24, 2007 at 12:49 PM

Free speech rights pertain to the government not abridging anyone’s free speech. Columbia is not required or obligated to provide a platform for IAmAWhackJob. They have the freedom to do so. But that should not be confused with an obligation to do so, except maybe in their own twisted thinking.

All I can do is shake my head and hope that whoever came up with that sign never has anymore authority in society than requiring his employees to flip the burgers with thier left hand and not their right.